courage.
from the beginning.
until the end.
FUCK MY LIFE, I JUST BURST INTO TEARS.
I am sorry for the non-book related post but its been 10 minutes and I am still laughing.
imagine being in ravenclaw and going back to your common room stumbling drunk in the middle of the night after a magical night of partying and having to answer a fucking riddle in order to get in your own goddamn bedroom
"what gets wetter and wetter the more it dries"
"your mom eeyyyyyyy"
“Is Draco alive? Is he in the castle?” The whisper was barely audible; her lips were an inch from his ear, her head bent so low that her long hair shielded his face from the onlookers. “Yes,” he breathed back. He felt the hand on his chest contract; her nails pierced him. Then it was withdrawn. She had sat up. “He is dead!” Narcissa Malfoy called to the watchers.
In the end, Voldemort’s fate twice came down to the choice of a woman, a mother.
Rock ‘n roll.
Harry Potter as a series repeatedly tells us never to underestimate a mother’s love. Lilly’s love for Harry nearly killed Voldemort the first time, Narcissa’s love for Draco set him up for his real death, and Voldemort’s greatest general was killed by Molly, a mother who loved all of her children and feared losing any more to the magical war.
Bitches. Get. Stuff. Done.
Anyone who thinks Harry Potter as a series isn’t good literature and doesn’t teach important life lessons/points of view about ethics, morality and responsibility, needs to G-O-OUT-DA-DO’.
This had to be the most raw moment in the series because the fact that she was like “My baby is okay that’s all that matters, and I know what will happen if Voldemort wins, so let’s end this.”
I mean, Voldemort lost because he trusted his followers to be implicit in their loyalty, but a lot had changed in the decade since he’d last terrorized the world. Like…the Death Eaters for the most part were calmed down and writing off those dark days as the “wild days of their youth” and shit, so when Voldemort pops back up ready to pick up where he left off, you could see a lot of the doubt in them like “Yo we grew up, son, shit ain’t like it was before.” But they followed out of fear mostly, not loyalty. Bellatrix was just crazy and in love with V so it didn’t matter to her what happened—and it ultimately led to her death.
But Narcissa was raw as fuck because she knew SOMEBODY had to stop him and she knew her husband was too scared to do it himself, so she devised her own on-the-fly plan.
The HP series is way too dope to be written off, and most of the detractors who write it off are just jealous of the hype it gets, but if you really read it, so many themes are covered in the story, chief among them being growing up and the expectations therein.
…am I rambling. I need to stop.
Dang, I didn’t even consider the whole “we’ve grown up” thing, but you’re absolutely right. And to add to that, not only have they grown up, they’ve had children. Being a Death Eater is something that these folks probably thought was hot shit when they were young, but now that they’ve grown up, they’re seeing their children doing the same thing, and suddenly it’s not so cool anymore. They’re deeply unsettled at best, and terrified at worst.
And Voldy literally lacks the ability to see this. He will never understand that love, and love for one’s children, also extends to his cronies. He will never understand that love causes people to take unimaginable risks FOR these children.
He will never understand that love for one’s children is so strong that a woman who’s followed him loyally for years will lie to his face—never mind that he’s THE MOST ACCOMPLISHED LEGILIMENS IN THE WORLD—about his absolute worst enemy. When she was forced to choose between her son and her leader, she chose her son, without even batting an eye.
THAT is powerful.
Exactly. These people have grown up, gotten married, and had children. Voldemort is that dude that was perpetually still trying to be forever young, still going to the same clubs, still doing the same fuckshit, and everybody who used to ride with him is like “For real, tho? We off that, man.”
Harry Potter draws a lot of parallels to the real world despite the story itself. I love it.
I love when Tumblr breaks out into hardcore analysis.
This was one of my very favorite scenes in the book, and I was relieved that it was done well in the film because it was so, so important to me personally. It affected what I wrote after that too — I could never again see Narcissa as a 2-dimensional bad guy.
She was strong where her husband was weak, and had intense courage while Lucius cowered in the shadows. I loved that she was the one who decided to leave the battle in the film adaptation. That scene where the battle is breaking out and she takes Draco by the hand and leads him away, with Lucius limping along behind — it gets me every time. Narcissa had enough of Voldemort and Death Eaters, and she just walked away, not even knowing what the outcome of the battle would be. She didn’t even care if her husband followed or not; she took her son by the hand and walked away from the shit her husband had dragged them into.
I have always imagined that she became a force to be reckoned with after that, and that Lucius basically sat in a chair and drank for the rest of his life while she became a respected member of the new wizarding society.
I have so much love for JKR’s depictions of what lengths mothers will go to for their children. It’s a theme that really resonates with me.
Harry Potter has really good, complicated views of a wide array of mothers and mother figures. It’s seriously one of my #1 favorite things about the series.
Considering JKR started writing it while a single mom struggling to raise her daughter, it makes a lot of sense, but I still appreciate it all the same.
I’m sick of people saying Snape was the worst friendzone ever. They weren’t friends anymore. He was hanging around death eaters and was dabbling in dark arts. The friendship wasn’t healthy anymore.
That doesn’t make it unhealthy… He was being tortured by her boyfriend and his friends and he couldn’t take it anymore so he found people who liked him the way he was. She dumped him as a friend, not the other way around. He called her mudblood, but it was pretty obvious he attempted to apologize and make up for it. SHE DATED A BULLY OVER A GUY WHO JUST WANTED A FRIEND.
First off, “her boyfriend” is inaccurate: when Lily ended her friendship with Snape, she wasn’t dating James. The friendship ended towards the end of their fifth year (“Snape’s Worst Memory” depicts OWLs), while Lily and James didn’t begin dating until their seventh year (canonically, after James had “deflated his head” and begun maturing.)* Lily wasn’t friends with the Marauders at this point. And, as for “he found people who liked him the way he was” - he was already friends with Lily. And…if the “way he was” includes an interest in the Dark Arts and hexing people, then perhaps Snape needed to actually revise who he was instead of finding people who encouraged that? Lily tries to talk to him about this, but he clearly doesn’t listen (see the moment where he turns off as soon as she agrees about disparaging James.)
Secondly, by their fifth year, the Snape/Lily friendship was toxic and unhealthy. Snape was growing more heavily involved in the Dark Arts and with people who were basically proto-Death Eaters (Rosier, Mulciber, etc.) These are people who are devoted to spewing what is the Wizarding world’s equivalent of racist rhetoric - the people who advocate murder and genocide of Lily and people like her. She dumped him as a friend because he called her Mudblood, but it wasn’t simply because of that - it’s clearly the last straw in a long line of issues Lily has been having with Snape (between Snape condoning what Mulciber did to Mary MacDonald - harmful Dark Magic that Snape dismisses as a prank; Snape calling other Muggle-borns “Mudblood” and using the same rhetoric as his friends; Snape using Dark Magic himself, which Lily abhors.)
Lily’s “I can’t pretend any more” shows that this, and things like this, have been an ongoing issue:
I’ve made excuses for you for years. None of my friends can understand why I even talk to you. You and your precious little Death Eater friends – you see, you don’t even deny it! You don’t even deny that’s what you’re all aiming to be! You can’t wait to join You-Know-Who, can you?
Emphasis there on years. Lily has spent years trying to ignore what she knows about Snape, trying to overlook the things he’s said and done, and this - calling her a slur to her face - is a moment of awakening. It’s the point where Lily simply can’t ignore that Snape has become a person who’s no longer her friend - “You’ve chosen your way; I’ve chosen mine.” That James Potter, who she hates, was willing to defend her while Snape called her a slur and said he didn’t need help from someone like her: it’s not a one-off incident, it’s simply the breaking point.
At that point, apologizing for using the slur isn’t enough, especially when it’s clear that Snape isn’t cognizant of everything else he’s done, or particularly repentant of the other actions he’s done - and his apology isn’t an effort or a promise to change. (Also, Lily doesn’t owe him forgiveness; implying that Lily owes him forgiveness is treading very close to that whole “Lily friendzoned him! Lily was obligated to forgive him! Lily was obligated to fall in love with him!” argument, which is in and of itself complete and utter tripe.)
*whether and how much James improved will hopefully be expanded upon by Pottermore - on one hand, we know that the bullying continued; OTOH, per Sirius, Lily was explicitly not aware of this - cf. the “he didn’t exactly take Snape along with them on dates and hex him,” comments, among others.) And the “Elvendork! It’s unisex!” story shows someone who’s still immature, and James didn’t have a lot of time in which to mature and grow before his death. But then we also have the James who was loyal to his friends, willing to join the Order and fight and who stood up to Voldemort personally three times; who willingly laid down his life for his wife and infant, wandless, in the hopes of buying them a few moments to escape; who, per JKR and per the text, became a better person. But this isn’t about James and Lily, because at the point where Lily ends the friendship between her and Snape, she clearly still loathes James - she’s calling him an “arrogant bullying little toerag” at the same time she’s ending the friendship with Snape. This isn’t about Lily choosing James over Snape - it’s about Lily choosing to walk away from Snape. James wasn’t in the picture.
And Lily had every right to end that friendship. Lily didn’t choose “a bully over a guy who just wanted a friend” - she chose someone who actually respected her over someone who called her the equivalent of a racial slur and who joined an organization devoted to the murder of people like her. Look at their later actions: James loved Lily and gave his life trying to give her a chance to escape. Snape, despite professing love for Lily, would have been willing to let Lily’s child die if it meant that she could be saved. Is that considerate of Lily’s feelings or Lily herself? No - that’s treating Lily like an object - it’s obsession, not love.
(And, actually, at this point in fifth year, Lily doesn’t choose either of them - she chooses to walk away from an unhealthy friendship with Snape, and she chooses to ignore James until she sees that he’s changed. So there’s that. And…to suggest that Lily had to pick Snape or that she should have chosen him…no. Snape didn’t respect her. Snape became a full-fledged Death Eater who believed in the cause after graduation. Snape didn’t care about what Lily wanted - he cared about wanting Lily. (“You do not care, then, about the deaths of her husband and child? They can die, as long as you have what you want?” The answer to that is an obvious, emphatic yes - Snape would have been totally fine with letting Harry die had he been able to secure Lily’s safety. Dumbledore’s “You disgust me” is there for a reason.)
Also, the entire term “friendzone” is complete and utter bullshit, implying that Lily owed Snape romantic love and sex because he befriended her, but that could be another post entirely. (Nobody owes anyone else romantic love/sex because of friendship, people are not some magic vending machine you put friendship coins into until sex comes out, and Lily’s friendship is not some crappy second-place prize. Lily is not a prize. People are not prizes. That is all.)
J.K. Rowling is writing a new movie set in the wizarding world.
REPEAT: J.K. ROWLING IS WRITING A NEW MOVIE SET IN THE WIZARDING WORLD!!
“Although it will be set in the worldwide community of witches and wizards where I was so happy for 17 years, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is neither a prequel nor a sequel to the Harry Potter series, but an extension of the wizarding world,” said Rowling, in a statement. “The laws and customs of the hidden magical society will be familiar to anyone who has read the Harry Potter books or seen the films, but Newt’s story will start in New York, 70 years before Harry’s gets underway.”
ooooooh.
hawberries
